Stamp Duty Land Tax

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I am, frankly, stunned. I am not entirely sure what is meant to happen in the House of Commons when a Minister is not present. However, I am sure that the Minister would have spoken in favour of the proposals that were introduced in yesterday’s autumn statement—

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. As far as I can see, no Minister is present. [Interruption.] I mean that no Treasury Minister is present. Is this normal practice? How can my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) proceed with her speech when there is no Treasury Minister here to respond?

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[Mr Speaker]

I am very grateful to the Secretary of State. We will see whether the Treasury Minister turns up, but the willingness to help of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is noted and appreciated, and I thank him for his typical courtesy in what he has just said. Let us now proceed in a pragmatic way and listen to Shabana Mahmood.

[Shabana Mahmood]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am not sure that I can respond to an opening speech that I have not heard. [Interruption.] Well, the case has not been made by the Government—the motion has only been made formally—so may I take some guidance from you, Mr Speaker, on how best to proceed?

[Mr Speaker]

Yes, the hon. Lady is welcome to take guidance from me, and it is this: the hon. Lady’s responsibility is to speak to the motion on the Order Paper rather than to any particular speech that might be made, so while I understand that this is an unusual state of affairs, the responsibility is to speak to the motion. The hon. Lady knows what the purport of the motion is, so she should not unduly trouble herself by trying to anticipate what the Minister might say if he were here—because he can’t, because he isn’t.

[Mr Speaker]

It would be. It would be perfectly orderly, and it is good of the hon. and learned Gentleman to offer to help, but I think we can get by without his assistance for now.

I hope my guidance to the hon. Lady is clear. I realise this is an unusual situation for her to face, but if I remember rightly she is a product of Lincoln college, Oxford, so she is what they call prodigiously bright, and I am sure she can cope with the situation.

[Shabana Mahmood]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and forgive me for seeking clarification on just one further point: I wonder whether it might be more helpful and conducive to bringing the debate along if I come in later, once the Minister has been able to present himself in the Chamber.

[Mr Speaker]

The answer is that the hon. Lady would need the leave of the House to proceed in that way, but my strong sense is that the leave of the House would be forthcoming. [Interruption.] I am in receipt of intelligence on this matter—[Interruption.] The Minister is here! I was just about to say he was a minute away. The Minister is with us and we are grateful to the Minister. [Interruption.] Order.

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[Shabana Mahmood]

With the leave of the House, I wish to respond to the Minister’s speech. I thank him for eventually making it to the Chamber to move his motion and introduce the debate—just when I thought I had this place sussed out, something else happens to remind me of the many different ways of interpreting parliamentary procedure and rules. I have learned something new today, for which I am grateful.

As we indicated yesterday, once the Chancellor had made the autumn statement, we will support the measures today and the Bill next week. I have seen the draft clauses and explanatory notes—there are only two clauses and one schedule—and we will consider the technical detail ahead of the debate next week, but in the meantime I have a few questions for the Minister. If he cannot answer them today, I hope he will give us further details in time to inform our debate next week.

The reforms to SDLT apply only to residential properties; the previous stamp duty system—the so-called slab system—remains in place for commercial properties. Beyond mere electioneering, what is the Government’s reason for focusing the proposals on the residential market? As he knows, in Scotland, where the Scottish Government will take control of stamp duty next April, the land and buildings transactions tax will apply to both commercial and residential properties, meaning that Scotland will have the system for both types of property, whereas we will retain two different systems. It would be helpful to understand the Government’s thinking and any assessments the Treasury has done on having two different systems.

In the context of corporation tax possibly being devolved to Northern Ireland, where different circumstances apply, have the Government done any modelling on the potential for unhealthy tax competition if we have this differential in the way in which stamp duty operates on commercial property in Scotland and England? It would be helpful to know how much work the Government have done on that point and whether they plan to introduce further proposals.

What assumptions have the Government made regarding house price increases as a result of the stamp duty changes? It looks like we are seeing a 1.4% increase in prices against a 1% reduction in stamp duty at the lower end, and it seems also that the tax take from stamp duty will rely on a 5% annual increase in property prices. Have the Government assessed whether that might price more people out of the property market? As the Minister will be aware, the OBR’s assessment accompanying the autumn statement states that house prices will continue to rise faster than incomes, which will risk pushing home ownership further out of reach for many people. Will he share with us the Treasury’s assessment and modelling in relation to the stamp duty changes and the impact on home ownership and prices?

The last time the Minister and I debated stamp duty—in a debate introduced by the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) in Westminster Hall—it was one of the only debates the House has had on stamp duty in recent times. It was a good opportunity for Members to raise issues of concern, and we discussed at length the difficulties with the system of stamp duty that the Government have now changed—the slab structure and so-called cliff edges, which no doubt created significant price distortions around the thresholds.

Many Members from all parties, housing specialists and commentators have long complained about the structure of stamp duty. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Mirrlees reviews and others all agreed that the tax was badly designed. Furthermore, it has undoubtedly been an increasing burden on buyers. From 1997 to 2005, house price inflation averaged more than 10% a year, and the proportion of property transactions attracting stamp duty rose from about half to more than three quarters over roughly the same period.

Measures to alleviate the burden focused primarily on thresholds and stamp duty holidays: the threshold was doubled in 2005; temporarily increased by £50,000 for one year in 2008; and doubled again for first-time buyers for three years from March 2010. Stamp duty has continued to be a significant burden, however. It has increased by 30% between 2009-10 and 2013-14. We have seen continued growth in the housing market and more people have been brought within the higher tax bracket, all of which have increased the burden significantly. This is therefore a sensible measure, and we will support it.

Measures to alleviate the burden on buyers are welcome, but we are experiencing the worst housing crisis for a generation, and we need much more action on housing supply if we are to get our housing market into better shape and help more young people and families to realise their dream of home ownership. I made this point to the Minister in the Westminster Hall debate as well. I am sure the Government will say that they are taking action on supply through the measures in the autumn statement and in their national infrastructure plan, but most of the announcements made in the flurry of activity over the past couple of days were in fact reannouncements of existing schemes and money, and many of the projects are already in the planning system.

The truth is that this Government have presided over the lowest levels of house building in peacetime since the 1920s. We are not even building half the homes we need to keep up with demand. We also know that home ownership is at its lowest level for 30 years and that, in the next few years, the average deposit is going to rise to £72,000, a sum that is far beyond the reach of many of our constituents, and certainly of my constituents in Birmingham, Ladywood. We needed to see much more action from the Government yesterday on getting homes built as well as on dealing with the issues on the demand side. We have set out our proposals, including a policy of getting 200,000 homes a year built by 2020. It would have been good if the Government could have taken a similarly ambitious approach to house building in their autumn statement yesterday. We also need to deal with the underlying causes of the housing crisis.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

The hon. Lady seems to have forgotten about the great recession that her party visited on this country. It is not surprising that, in those circumstances, fewer houses were built during that period.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I find it interesting that Government Members are happy to plead global circumstances to explain their failures in Government yet conveniently forget that we had a global financial crisis in 2008. I think the hon. and learned Gentleman made that point in a slightly petty way.

[Steve McCabe]

If we are supposed to have recovered from the recession, why is house building now at its lowest level since the 1920s? To me, that sounds like a failure rather than a success.

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government said in their autumn statement that everything was on course. If the finances are in such a good state, why will they not adopt an ambitious programme of house building? Until we have action on the supply side, we will not be able to get to grips with this lop-sided housing market.

We need to get more homes built, and we also need to deal with the underlying causes of the crisis. For example, we know that too much land is being held as a speculative investment even though local people need homes, and that the trickle of new developments that are being built are snapped up long before people from the area can benefit from them. We also know that our country’s capacity to build homes has shrunk drastically. Fifty years ago, the public and private sectors between them built more than 300,000 homes a year; now we rely on a small number of volume house builders and, as a result, we build far fewer homes.

A number of measures are needed to deal with the underlying causes of the housing crisis and to get the number of homes built that this country needs. We have proposed new powers for local authorities, as well as a help to build scheme to run alongside the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, which we support. We particularly want to see an increase in the role of small and medium-sized construction firms, because the resulting diversity in the market would help to get more homes built and deal with the underlying causes of the crisis. As I have said, we need to see supply-side measures in conjunction with the proposals on stamp duty and the Help to Buy scheme. That would help us to get to grips with the crisis and arrive at a position where the dream of home ownership was not so far out of the reach of our constituents across the country.

I also want to mention our proposal for a tax on high-value properties—the so-called mansion tax. We believe that that is a necessary measure to get an annual sum of money into our national health service, which is in crisis and in desperate need of further, stable funding. It is interesting that the Chancellor has accepted, in his stamp duty proposals, the principle that very high-value properties in this country are under-taxed. Earlier in this Parliament, he introduced the annual tax on envelope dwellings—the ATED—which is described as a kind of mansion tax for high-value properties held by companies in a corporate envelope. Now, the Government are characterising the new stamp duty changes as their version of a mansion tax. I wonder why, as they creep towards an actual mansion tax, they will not make that final leap and simply adopt our proposal, thereby guaranteeing an annual sum for our national health service.

The Prime Minister is reported to have remarked some time ago that the Government could never introduce a mansion tax because the Conservative party’s donors would not accept it. I wonder whether that is the only thing holding the Government back. The truth is that they should go further and adopt our proposal. There is a difference between what they are doing today and our proposal. Stamp duty is a transaction tax, but our tax on high-value properties would be an annual charge that would provide a stable source of revenue for the national health service.

One of the Government’s regular criticisms of our proposal is that it would hit those who were asset rich but income poor. However, we have already set out how that could be dealt with through a system of deferral for anyone with an income of less than £42,000 a year—in other words, a basic rate taxpayer. That would be a perfectly sensible and adequate way of helping those people. We could then fairly and progressively introduce a tax that would help to get the national health service’s finances back on track.

[Mr Gauke]

I should like to ask the hon. Lady a practical question about her policy of excluding from the mansion tax those with an income below £42,000. She will be aware that some of the richest people in this country live off their capital rather than their income. Does she acknowledge that such people could conceivably fall within the proposed exemption?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We need to be a bit careful here. We should not really be discussing the policies of the Opposition. The debate is about stamp duty. We have already had a difficult start, and I do not want things to get any more difficult.

[Shabana Mahmood]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would be happy to discuss those technical details with the Minister on another occasion when we would not fall out of order.

I reiterate that we expect our policy to raise the £1.2 billion that, according to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, internal Treasury modelling has shown it could raise. We have seen nothing to change our assessment of those figures. As I was saying, the NHS is in dire straits. There is a crisis in accident and emergency, and it is getting harder to see a GP. This Government have made things worse with their £3 billion top-down reorganisation of the NHS. If that money was available at the beginning of this Parliament, it should have gone into front-line services. We therefore need an annual source of revenue to help to deal with those issues, and a tax on the highest-value homes—the so-called mansion tax—will help the next Labour Government to do that. As I said at the outset, we believe that the proposed changes to stamp duty represent a sensible measure, and they will have our support today and next week when the proposed legislation is formally brought forward.